Evaluation of method of cohort research articles using Q-coh assessment tool
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18203/2349-3259.ijct20233172Keywords:
Clinical sciences, Speech and hearing sciences, Q-cohAbstract
Background: Clinical and evidence-based information is very important in the field of clinical sciences including speech and hearing sciences. More and More professionals are resorting to published articles for knowledge on assessment and intervention that are evidence based. Therefore, there is a need of standard evaluation methods for each type of research that is published. The aim of the study is to investigate the quality of the cohort research articles by using the assessment tool Q-coh and thereby checking the reliability of the assessment tool.
Methods: The tool Q-coh developed by Jarde et al with the aim to screen the methodological quality of the primary studies with a cohort design was taken for quality assessment of cohort research articles. Q-Coh consists of 26 items and 7 inferences. Assessment was carried out by few reviewers who were blinded to the classification of quality and based on the evaluation received from the reviewers the quality of the articles were determined. Agreement analysis was done to check the proportion of agreement between the raters and reliability of the tool respectively.
Results: The research findings indicate that there is a fair to substantial agreement between the raters. Further, the quality of the articles was determined and classified into the class of acceptable and good quality.
Conclusions: The present study was conducted to check if the checklist Q-coh is applicable to assess the methodological quality of cohort research studies. The outcomes of the study indicate that the tool is reliable.
References
Jardea A, Losillaa JM, Vivesa J, Rodrigob MF. Q-Coh: A tool to screen the methodological quality of cohort studies in systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Available at: https://www.redalyc.org/ pdf/337/33726322002.pdf. Accessed on 20 February 2023.
Ma LL, Wang YY, Yang ZH, Huang D, Weng H, Zeng XT. Methodological quality (risk of bias) assessment tools for primary and secondary medical studies: what are they and which is better? Mil Med Res. 2020;7(1):7.
Rao A, Brück K, Methven S, Evans R, Stel VS, Jager KJ, et al. Quality of Reporting and Study Design of CKD cohort studies assessing mortality in the elderly before and after strobe: A Systematic Review. PLoS One. 2016;11(5):e0155078.
Margulis AV, Pladevall M, Riera-Guardia N, Varas-Lorenzo C, Hazell L, Berkman ND, et al. Quality assessment of observational studies in a drug-safety systematic review, comparison of two tools: the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale and the RTI item bank. Clin Epidemiol. 2014;6:359-68.
Dreyer NA, Bryant A, Velentgas P. The GRACE Checklist: A Validated Assessment Tool for High Quality Observational Studies of Comparative Effectiveness. J Manag Care Spec Pharm. 2016; 22(10):1107-13.
Kim MB, Zhang Y, Chang Y, Ryu S, Choi Y, Kwon MJ, et al. Diabetes mellitus and the incidence of hearing loss: a cohort study. Int J Epidemiol. 2017; 46(2):717-26.
Liu W, Dong H, Yang L, Zhao H, Dong W, Yang Y. Severity and Its Contributing Factors in Patients With Vestibular Migraine: A Cohort Study. Front Neurol. 2020;11:595328.
Marsden J, Pavlou M, Dennett R, Gibbon A, Knight-Lozano R, Jeu L, et al. Vestibular rehabilitation in multiple sclerosis: study protocol for a randomised controlled trial and cost-effectiveness analysis comparing customised with booklet based vestibular rehabilitation for vestibulopathy and a 12 month observational cohort study of the symptom reduction and recurrence rate following treatment for benign paroxysmal positional vertigo. BMC Neurol. 2020; 20(1):430.